Cinq pièces en trio for oboe, clarinet and bassoon

As one of the most versatile of all French composers, Ibert could write music as entertaining as that of any of his more fashionable contemporaries. Basically, however, he was a far more conventional figure than Poulenc, both as a man and as a musician. The five short woodwind trios written in 1935, only a couple of years after the first version of Poulenc’s Sextet, are as modest in personality as they are economical in their proportions.Vaguely archaic rather than trendy in style, they are both finely crafted in themselves and effectively arranged as a symmetrical five-part construction round a resourceful little scherzo in the middle.